The Lost Companion
by petitehero
Summary: Takes place between the time Rose was stranded in the AU and Martha. The Doctor saves a young illustrator from herself and she inadvertently saves him. There's a reason no one has heard of this companion. This is a collection of their adventures till the very end, when the greatest sacfrice is made.
1. Avoiding the Universe

I didn't know what I was doing up on that bridge, not really. Honestly, I wasn't thinking. I'd spent so much time running and hurting, I just needed a place to stop. To stop everything. And the waters below were so deep and dark and beautiful, I felt as if they could swallow all my problems whole. That it'd be like being eaten by the universe, what with the stars reflected in them.

But I'd been up there for hours, and still I hadn't jumped.

But I didn't know why. Maybe it was survival instinct. The ghosts of mom and dad and Victor pulling at my sleeves, leading me away into brighter times. But what was brighter than the great, big stars swimming in the water below? What was better than being devoured by pretty lights when everything else seemed ugly and broken?

I shuffled toward the ledge, wind tugging at my hair and cold settling in my bones. It was so cold outside, my fingers were turning purple from it. The closer I got to the end, I thought of more and more random things. My unfinished novel, its pages still sitting stiffly beside my typewriter. The children's book I illustrated, fresh off the press and doing unexpectedly well in the market. It was about astronauts and brunch. I thought of how I'd never gone back to Brazil after my college trip. How I'd never played the Laughing Game with a straight face.

It seemed the closer you are to death, the more things you wish about life. But it's hard to think straight in the cold when you're alone, so I didn't put up much of a fight.

I was just there, the tips of my boots just hanging over the drop, kissing silent air. I was ready to spill into the silence when…

The sound of footsteps startled me.

I looked round, scrambling for my balance and suddenly completely embarrassed at my circumstances. I pulled my scarf tight against me and saw a figure approach, a silhouette running. Light struck it from a lamp nearby, and I saw he was a young man, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties. There was an air of urgency about him as he dashed by. And then he did a double take like a cartoon, spinning on his heel and running right up to me.

"Are you looking to jump?" He asked in a crisp British accent, pointing to the starry grave below.

"Well, yes, I-I was." I stuttered, taken aback by his directness.

"Ah. Well. Tragedy. But you're here now, so. Now, I need you to do me a favour."

"A…favour?"

"Yes, yes. Good. You understand English still. Never know with you hopeless type." He dug into his pocket and held out a small, thin piece of metal. "Now. I need you to hold this up against the first piece of metal I gave you, about three inches apart, and then turn the switch next time you see me."

"Excuse me?" I asked, dumbfounded. "You haven't given me anything yet."

The man sighed, exasperated. "Now, I've only got fifteen seconds until the loop starts again." He pointed at me. "Right there, see? That piece of metal, and that switch."

I looked down to where he was pointing and gasped. How long had I been holding those? Hadn't I just looked and noted the colours of my wasting fingers? I wasn't holding anything then.

"That's impossible." I whispered.

"You'd like to think so, I'm sure." The strange, foreign man said. "But I haven't got the-ten seconds, Wren, ten seconds! We've had this conversation thirteen times before, now. You'll remember this time, won't you?"

"How do you know my name?" I asked, moving back away from him.

"Now don't be startled, I haven't got the time—" He sounded like the White Rabbit, always in a rush. It scared me. I moved back too far and slipped, falling, falling passed the rabbit hole into the starry waters below-!

Except he caught me. His hand tightened around my wrist, painfully tight and focused. He pulled me a couple feet from the edge, holding me still while I caught my breath.

"There you go, thirteen times I've saved that life. This favour seems small now, right? I'll forget this, too, Wren. Here." He held my hands about three inches apart, spanning the metals next to each other. My thumb grazed the switch. "Ah, ah, ah. Not yet. Remember, Wren." He bent closer to me and whispered in my ear. "Remember."

I opened my mouth to reply, not entirely sure what would come out when the man sort of _shimmered_, like a trick of the light was fading him out as a hologram—

I didn't know what I was doing up on that bridge, not really. Honestly, I wasn't thinking. I'd spent so much time running and hurting, I just needed a place to stop. To stop everything. And the waters below were so deep and dark and beautiful, I felt as if they could swallow all my problems whole. That it'd be like being eaten by the universe, what with the stars reflected in them.

But I'd been up there for hours, and still I hadn't jumped.

But I didn't know why.

I edged closer, staring into the water. I imagined a sea of bright blue boxes swimming in it. Letterings saying 'police' trickled through the starlit water, an echo of the sirens and crime tape that would come if I gave in. I was afraid for myself, _of _myself. I imagined mom and dad and Victor pulling me away by my jacket sleeves. Telling me to cling to the life they could not. I thought of all the travels I'd never taken, the candies I'd never eaten. The books I'd left unpublished.

It seemed the closer you are to death, the more things you wish about life. But it's hard to think straight in the cold when you're alone, so I didn't put up much of a fight.

I was just there, the tips of my boots just hanging over the drop, kissing silent air. I was ready to spill into the silence when…

The sound of footsteps startled me.

I turned to see a figure run by me, trailing a monstrous shadow by the coat he was wearing. He ran right by me, tortured footsteps.

And suddenly my thumb twitched. I looked down, shocked to see I was holding some sort of metal device. Light erupted from it in spirals and waves, bending and snapping in erratic bursts. Startled, I dropped it and backed away. I followed the lights with my eyes and cried out as they enveloped the hurried man. What had I just set off? His silhouette twisted and bent with the light and I cowered from the impossibility of it all. I sped backward, propelled by fear, and I went too far. I began the fall, the final fall, the one I was meant to choose or deny but now had no say—

Except the man caught me.

"Wren Cooke, that's fourteen times now I've saved this life. I do believe you owe me something big."

"Who are you?" I fought his grip. "How do you know my name?"

"Why, I'm the Doctor." He grinned. "Nice to meet you for the fourteenth time."

"F-fourteenth? My god, are you insane?"

"Insane? No, no, no. I'm pleasantly illogical." He amiably dropped his hand and stepped away as I struggled to distance myself from him. "Ah, I wish you hadn't dropped this. I might need it again." He bent over and picked up the strange device I'd activated. "There we go." He pocketed it.

"What just happened?"

"Oh. I suppose you'd have forgotten our third conversation of course. You just saved me from a time loop."

"A what?"

"A time loop."

"A…a time…?"

"Loop." He drew out the o's and popped the p sound while drawing a circle in the air with his finger. "Well, then. Thank you kindly for your assistance, Wren Cooke. I hope we meet again in the future."

"I-I don't…"

"Ah, and let's not meet on a ledge again, shall we? If I may.." He offered his arm to me, and I took it in a daze. He led me across the bridge and to a nearby park bench. "There's so much for you to live for, you know. Like polka and Christmas pie."

"I'm…"

"In shock, yes. I suggest you pretend this was all a dream. That seems to help your kind."

I fainted.


	2. A Blue Box of A Rabbit Hole

I woke up in my room, stretched across my bed. I was wearing the clothes from the night before, and my head felt like a thousand angry robots had raged across the surface of my skull. I groaned and sat up slowly, trying to remember how I'd gotten where I was. I never slept in my clothes unless I'd stayed up so late working on concept illustrations that I'd resorted to watching I Love Lucy episodes and given up all ambition in life.

Last night. It came back not in a rush, but a stream, a loop of images in my head. I'd been…my heart skipped a beat, but in no sort of warm, fuzzy manner. I'd been trying to push myself into suicide. The rush came, then, a rush of embarrassment and chagrin as I realized how close I'd come to throwing everything away. Sitting at home, surrounded by pictures of family and friends and the evidence of my very hectic but obviously fulfilling life made me feel weak in the knees at the thought of ending it all over the grief locked tight in my heart.

My parents and Victor would have cried and shouted and thrown things if they were here to see this. The clutter on my floor looked horribly out of sorts, like some refugee got lost in a dirge of books and balled up paper. This was how I grieved.

"This is insane." I muttered. Insanity…the word reminded me of trench coats and electricity. What else had happened last night? _There was a man. A mad man with a coat and a metal device. _I shook my head when I replayed the scene in its entirety. This was Corry, Pennsylvania, not an episode of the X Files.

I heaved myself off the bed, intent on streaming caffeine and logic into my system in one fell swoop. I'd read the classifieds and click 'random article' on Wikipedia until the world made sense again. As I was crossing the floor, my toes caught on one of the mashed up balls of paper.

I bent for it and unwrinkled it, smoothing out the crinkles and corners with my thumbs. The picture was of an astronaut in space without his helmet on. He hadn't choked because a kind alien had shared technology that let him breathe in a circle of light. The picture was drawn in rough, imprecise lines, obviously in the first stage of drafting for my next book. Why had I discarded this one?

At the bottom of the page was scrawled 'there's no kindness in the world anymore.'

"It's a shame you crumpled up that one. It's one of your best."

I spun quickly at the voice, gripping my chest as if it would slow my startled heart.

"You." The word fell from my lips and landed somewhere among the ruined pictures on the carpet. "You're the man from last night…that impossible man."

"Well, I'm hardly impossible if I'm here, now am I?" He grinned that schoolboy grin, leaning on my dresser like he knew this room. "After you fainted, I thought I ought to make sure you weren't all damaged and wibbly when you woke up."

I stared. I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't decide whether to call for help or thank him. Obviously, he'd broken into my house. But obviously, he'd taken me home after passing out in public in a dark street where a lot of bad things could have happened. He didn't seem dangerous, but given the circumstances under which we'd met, there was a lot to question and a lot to fear.

"You're looking all cross-eyed and shaky." The man noted.

"Who are you? Really?"

"Oh! That one's easy. I'm the Doctor. We've met…fifteen times now? Sixteen? Can't remember. Try again. I can answer much harder questions than that and we've got all the time in the world."

"The Doctor? Doctor who? Doctor of what?"

"Just the Doctor, Doctor of everything. And anything. And oh, whatever else I feel like being, sometimes it depends on the trajectory of the moon and which pants I'm wearing."

"You're…completely off it." I rubbed my face. "I'm going to…call someone…unless you leave right now."

"Oh, don't do that, that's no fun at all."

"No fun…? Look, I appreciate you helping me out the other night…but…this is too much. I really can't follow this conversation, wherever it's going."

"Well, it's going to someplace…downright grand!" The Doctor, as I had no idea what else to call him, burst away from my dresser and made a great gesture with his hands. "While you were sleeping, I had a lot of time to think about what to do about our little adventure yesterday. Of course, I could leave you to it and let you rationalize it and agonize over it until you decided it was a figment of your imagination, but just imagine, just imagine if I could show you…I can show you! I snooped around a bit, sorry, though I'm really not, but I just looked around and read some of these books lying about with your name on them. All this heart for space and journeying, Wren Cooke, and you were going to snuff it out!" He shook his head and took a breath. "A downright shame your race is, with their heavy, heavy hearts and failing sights."

"I don't want to hear it." I snapped. Sure, he'd saved me from myself and saw me in a very scary place in my life, but he had no right to stand there, a _trespasser, _and tell me about myself. "You can go now, thanks."

"No, no, no. You're getting offended. Can't have that. What I'm saying is, I'm in a tight place, too, Wren Cooke, and I've got a little pocket of empty that you could fill right up with your want for something more. I can promise you the very stars you draw, the creatures you imagine."

I threw myself down on my bed. Clearly I wasn't going to get any sort of caffeine, closure, or sanity any time in the near future. "There you go being insane again. Didn't we have enough of that last night for the next millennium or so?"

"Oh! Great idea. We could go to the next millennium. There are so many things I could show you, things that I haven't shown yet, not to Sarah, not to Rose—" The light in his eyes and voice sputtered out then, turned to something gray and troubled.

Despite myself, I felt bad for the guy. Apparently there was some as yet undetermined degree of delusion and emotional disconnect in his life. And he'd taken me home proper, and he didn't seem bent on harming me. He just looked like…well, it just looked like he wanted some company.

As I got up for the second time, I realized I was the face of every stupid victim ever.

"I don't know what's going on up here." I gestured to my head. "For either of us. But you took me home, I feel like it's only fair to return the favour."

His eyes recovered a speck of their luster and will. "Oh, you won't regret it, Wren Cooke."

The words were harmless, light.

"Just Wren. If you're just the Doctor, then I'm just Wren." I pulled a sweatshirt on and pulled my scarf from under the hem. "Okay, then. Lead the way, space man."


	3. Sipping in Starlight

**A/N Thank you so much for the reviews :D. They keep me going when I'm feeling apathetic about writing or discouraged c: ! Sorry if this chapter is a bit out of canon, I find the tenth doctor harder to write for than the eleventh. Bear with me? **

"I don't understand." I stood there blankly in the cold afternoon air, arms wrapped tight around myself.

"This is it." He insisted, gesturing to the deep blue box in front of us.

"You do _not _live in a phone booth." I said determinedly.

"_Obviously _not." He agreed. "That would be just daft. I live in a police box. Says so right on the front." He smiled purely. He wasn't egging me on. He was _serious. And seriously unhinged, _I thought darkly. Why had I let myself be dragged from the safety of my home to follow this strange man straight into Crazy Land?

"Look, whoever you are, you need to get this checked." I pointed to my skull. "And just about everything else, too."

"I told you, I'm the Doctor." He ignored the rest of my comment completely.

"'The Doctor'. What are you, Madonna or something?"

"Look, Wren, if you're going to be a great big knickering nancy, I can show my police box to someone else." The Doctor said this as if I could never forgive myself for missing out on this great opportunity. I rolled my eyes.

"Fine. Fine. So far you haven't tried to mug me or murder me or anything else completely morbid. So I'll be nice and play along. Now, are you going to keep a girl out in the weather or be a gentleman and invite her into your home so she can hurry up and move along with her life?"

"_Well _then!" He turned on the heels of his Converse excitedly—and that, who wears Converse with a suit?—and opened the door to the box. He stepped inside and beckoned me forward with hurried fingertips.

"TARDIS, sweet, TARDIS!" He cried out, elated.

I stopped, colder than the wind blowing forcefully outside.

The box was not a box. The box was something else entirely. The inside was all wide and open and full of golden…_machinery…_and platforms and switches and…_Maker. _

"What is this?" I asked. I looked around for hidden cameras, somebody to pop out screaming 'got you!', to make everything make sense again.

But no one did.

"_This…_is the last functional TT Type 40 TARDIS in the whole grand universe." He said, smiling widely. "And she's all mine."

"This is…_insane._" I whispered. I'd been saying the word so much since I met this man. But…I saw it, too. This wasn't in his head. I was living it, standing in his reality, the things he'd been sputtering on about. I walked further into the room, felt the metal railings and breathed in air that tasted like stardust.

Was I insane as well then?

Or had I really died that night on the bridge, and this was some convoluted purgatory?

"Oh, you! You've got that faint-y, wibbly look about you." The Doctor shook his finger at me.

"I'm feeling…kinda…wibbly." I murmured absently, running my fingers along my face.

"Well don't faint again. That would just make things all awkward and bothersome."

I barely had the presence to shoot him an incredulous, charring look, but I managed for the sake of principle.

"It was all real? You're real? And that, that loop?" I asked because I needed someone else to say yes, to tell me what was going on. Because I sure as hell didn't know.

"Oh, that. Yes, I'd thought we'd gotten past that. Real. All real. That was real. This is real." He gestured to the—TARDIS—and then to himself and me. "I'm real and you're real. You're actually taking this a lot better than I'd expected. You're my first American on board, too, so exciting! Absolutely marvelous."

Somehow I found my footing, and a sense of wonder overcame my sense of shock and disillusionment. After all, once you got past the whole bigger-on-the-inside-than-on-the-out, well…the place was just _beautiful. _

"…They're all wrong." I muttered, inspecting a series of knobs and dials.

"What is?"

"All my designs. All the space ships and carriers and everything else I've ever drawn like that. They're entirely confined, entirely human. This, _this, _is something completely out of the box. Or, rather, _in _the box." I smiled a bright little half smile. The first real smile I'd smiled in ages.

"You're in the midst of something entirely new and unlike anything you've seen before, and you're focusing on doodles?"

"Hey! Hey. We're talking about my life's work here, 'kay? I bet you this," I gestured to the place with a flick of my wrist, "does not pay the rent. So let's just chill it on the insults."

"Fine, fine." Suddenly his face and voice drew tight in solemnity. "So, how about it, Wren Cooke? Will you come with me?"

There was a beat of unmistakable silence as we just looked at each other.

"_Come _with you? Come with you, where?"

"To the stars and the moons and the planets, and well, everywhere and anywhere in time and space. All the things in those pictures you write and stories you draw, they can be real."

His eyes were tight, too, and that aura of sadness was there again. He looked like he was preparing to take a real, physical blow.

But if anything today was really insane, this was it. First, I was accepting that yesterday was chockfull of extraterrestrial events. I was accepting that not only was the Doctor completely sane, but he was something wonderful and different.

And, God, I just wanted to get out of here so badly. I needed to be thrown out of everything I'd been for the past two months. I'd extended all the deadlines from my publisher and put my social life on hold. There was nothing to hold me back but the wispy hands of ghosts and my own gripping inertia.

"It seems like we've both lost a lot recently." I began. "And it seems like we've got a lot of forgetting and renewing and, well, just a whole helluva lot of Lifetime-esque things to go get through. So let's go raid the stars."

The grin the Doctor gave this time was positively blinding, dissolving all the sobriety and caution and age of his face into a little boy's. "Brilliant."

He turned on his heels again, coat drifting behind him in a crisp motion as he strode to the center console of the…police box. He turned back partially, just enough to meet my eyes.

"Where to, Wren Cooke?"


End file.
